


entropy

by paradisetrain



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angel of Death!Philza, Anti Tommy, Blood God!Technoblade, But with extras!, Canon Compliant, Canon Parallel, Canon Retelling, Canon additive?, Chaos God!Dream, Dream neutral, Gen, Introspection, he's a great guy but his DSMP character is annoying, the character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29417703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisetrain/pseuds/paradisetrain
Summary: Here is a server ruled by Chaos and Blood. Here is peace, sinking in the wake of a war. Here are the footsteps of change, growing ever louder, drawing ever nearer. On the Dream SMP, the only constant is change.or:The death of L'Manburg, in the eyes of the Blood God.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	entropy

**Author's Note:**

> Writing fanfiction about block men pog! I wrote half of this in the week after L’Manburg got blown up and then promptly forgot about it for three weeks oops.
> 
> While Phil shouted "You're my son!" to Wilbur before he killed him, this story will not follow SBI family dynamics because, like Techno said, his character just doesn't make sense if they're a family. 
> 
> Warning for Tommy apologists: I say some not nice things about his character. (No hate to the man(child) himself, I enjoy his non DSMP content! But his character is very inconsistent and annoying.) 
> 
> This note is too long. Enjoy!

_Technoblade_

He stalks the battlefield, holding his rocket launcher loosely in his hand. Steps calm and deliberate, back straight, head high, shoulders thrown back. Flames erupt around him but he doesn't even flinch.

_Blood for the Blood God,_ the voices hiss.

He raises his crossbow, aims, and fires.

For a split second, the crack of the firework explosion drowns out the cacophony of voices in his head, before they're back and calling for more blood. He shoves them away until they are nothing but static in the back of his mind.

He needs to be able to think, damn it.

He draws his sword and leaps into the fray. This government, who were using their power to oppress the powerless and exploiting those who could not defend themselves —

He would plunge his sword through the heart of the tyrant.

What was the point of strength if you couldn't help those weaker than yourself?

_Kill them,_ the voices chanted. _Kill them all._ And Technoblade obeys, surrendering to their call.

He fights. Not for himself, but for those trapped here, weak and powerless and suffering.

He was an anarchist, and there was a dictator he needed to send to his grave.

There is a lull in the fighting when Dream asks to speak with Wilbur.

Then, Schlatt dies, clutching at his chest.

Finally—

_"The new president of L'Manburg!"_

Technoblade sees red.

Hadn't he been clear from the start? He was here to destroy governments and disable the powers of authority. To create a free world where all actions would be committed by choice, rather by extortion.

They had _cast him aside_ as soon as his use to them disappeared.

He levels his rocket launcher at Tommy, who in his mind has switched from ally to enemy within minutes.

"I did not send _weeks_ plannin' this revolution; giving you guys gear, for you guys to replace one tyrant with another!"

Only silence responds to him, no one willing to acknowledge his plight.

_"Don't you see what's happenin' here?"_ he tries desperately. _"Don't you see history repeatin' itself?"_

But they don't see. Poor, blind mortals and their infinitesimally short lives, never learning from the past, doomed to always repeat it over and over. Pushing the wheel to turn and turn and turn.

Tommy is deaf to his protests. High off his victory, blinded by hubris, he declares Technoblade the traitor and it's open warfare once more.

Those who had once been on the receiving end of his strikes become his allies. Those who had claimed to be his friends, his brothers; those who had used him as a weapon to serve their own ends and then discarded him once he'd fulfilled his role—

He would see to it that those who betrayed him would meet a bloody, gruesome end.

His shield is long forgotten. He goes full offensive, his sword sweeping great arcs of flame as it seeks to bite human flesh.

He leaves fountains of blood spurts in his wake. It falls from the sky like raindrops, muddying the ground into a red-brown sludge, soaking into his cape but he doesn't plan to try to wash it out.

The cape was red for a reason.

The wind picks up, filling the thick fabric and sending it billowing out behind him. It fans the flames and sending sparks flying from charred corpses to buildings. They roar and crackle, licking their way up the side of a wall and begin to engulf a L'Manburg flag. It's a pitiful sight, left hanging in tatters.

Technoblade vows it here, that this country would end in fire and blood.

And if it didn't—

He had a backup plan in an Ender chest of skulls and sand.

And then, in the middle of a bloodbath, it begins.

A rumble beneath their feet. The ground begins to shake. Through the haze of bloodlust, Techno realises what's happening.

_The TNT_.

He wastes no time getting to higher ground. It also provides him with a decent vantage point to watch the ground erupt beneath them, killing anyone caught in the crossfire.

And then there was a crater where a nation once stood.

_Wilbur had done it._

This place he had created, his love labour; love lost. His Frankenstein, taken from him and turned against him. His unfinished symphony, forever unfinished, _if he couldn't have it, no one else could_.

But Technoblade wasn't finished yet.

Wilbur had one destructive creation.

Techno would have two.

It's exhilarating to fight alongside Withers, instead of against them. There is no rhyme or reason to his conflict anymore, no noble cause, no righteous goal. Nothing but a single-minded urge to wage war and seek revenge from the land that had hurt himself and his friends and then hurt them again. Revenge on the place that had grown something ugly and evil and corrupt inside what used to be good people. Revenge on the people who had been foolish enough to believe they wouldn't succumb to the endless cycles of history, the never-ending turn of the wheel. The people who had never even thought of him as a person, with thoughts and opinions and feelings.

The clear whistle of his blade cuts through the roar of battle as easily as it cut through bodies. Vengeance bleeds out of each cut, and retribution sets itself into each scar.

All the heroes meet the same fate. They bite off more than they can chew, and end up choking to death on hubris.

He would bring that death.

He is high off blood and strength potions and he kills and kills and kills.

_"If you want to be a hero, Tommy, then die like one!"_

*

_Philza_

They're both scarred after the battle.

Mentally. Physically. They've both done — _terrible things_ — but they both believed they were in the right.

Phil had killed his own son, while Techno—

Techno had massacred a nation.

What a pair they made.

The ends justify the means, Phil thinks, and Wilbur was sick, he wasn't himself. He had blown up a country then begged Phil to put him out of his misery, so he had.

One life, or a hundred.

Who knows how much more conflict this new, cold, manipulative Wilbur would have started if Phil had let him live?

(He likes to think that the person who had fallen to his knees and given Phil his blade had been the real Wilbur. The old Wilbur, before L'Manburg and Pogtopia, before this world was divided into countries and citizens and exiles. A Wilbur yet untouched by insanity and corruption.)

It was the right thing to do.

But why was the right thing so very wrong? He recalls the battle, and the sheer number of people who were put to their grave by Techno's Orphan Obliterator. He knows it was the right thing to do. Manburg was the antithesis of freedom, so Techno had swung his blade at the bloodstained chains and killed until they were broken.

Yet wasn't being the cause of so many deaths so very wrong?

They say the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

Whatever the cost—

They had peace now.

He remembers talking with Techno in a stronghold of snow and ice. It feels like aeons ago when they had returned home, swords still unsheathed and armour in tatters. Phil had commented on finally getting some peace and quiet, then asking after Techno's voices.

Techno had replied, in peacetime, there were fewer voices, but in peacetime, it was quieter, so he could hear them easier. They never really went away.

Not for the first time, Phil wishes he could do more to aid in his struggles. But no matter how similar they were, and no matter their friendship, they were not the same.

The power that set them above the others also set them apart. Power makes people peerless, even amongst the powerful.

They were the Blood God and the Angel of Death.

They can laugh and joke as friends, but they were not the same. And they would never be the same.

*

"I found a place. Far away from here, in the snowy plains outside of a spruce forest. It's peaceful there."

Phil listens. Techno realises he's missed this, having someone who will consider each of his words, rather than simply speak over them.

"It reminds me of our old empire."

Phil chuckles at the reminder. The Antarctic Empire had seemed great and powerful, but really it was just two guys messing around and seeing how much they could get away with. Despite its name, it wasn't a government in any way, shape or form.

No. After pushing the bounds of how much land they could claim, they had simply returned it to its original residents.

"Wanna conquer the world again?" Phil asks.

Techno pulls a face. "Nah. I'm kinda done with fightin' for the time bein'."

"You? Done with fighting?" Phil laughs.

"You don't need to sound so surprised!" Techno retorts in mock-anger.

"It just seems so unlike you!"

He shrugs. Phil's not wrong. "I dunno. It sounds nice. Going somewhere far away, buildin' a cottage in the tundra, farm some turtles, convert to pacifism—"

"Pacifism! Techno, are you retiring?"

"Perhaps!"

"You're the Blood God!"

"Even Blood Gods can take vacations!"

Phil wheezes. "Alright. Alright, I'll join you, it's just— do you know how ridiculous this sounds?"

He grins at Phil.

"Maybe if it's ridiculous enough, they won't believe it, and if they try to hunt me down, they won't be able to find me."

Phil _cackles_.

*

He's been out all night again.

Hunting mobs, he claims, but Phil sees the way his hair is a mess and his clothes are damp. There's a sheen of sweat on his brow, one that speaks of physical exertion.

Technoblade wouldn't need to put this much effort into killing mere mobs.

No, his sword isn't covered with enough gunk for that.

It's not clean, not even close. But the light streaks of zombie viscera and silky threads of spider webs aren't slathered over the netherite blade the way a full night of hunting would have it. Phil would bet anything that he's just spent the night hacking the training dummies

he'd made to pieces, before slicing a zombie and a couple spiders in half on the way back to the cottage.

He avoids Phil's gaze.

His irises simmer steadily, the usual oynx gaining a dark red sheen. Phil studies them carefully. The bloodlust is dormant for now, but it's still there, rumbling beneath the surface, like magma before an eruption. In time, it will consume the life around him in it's yawning jaws, as it has done time and time again.

Phil doesn't know what it is that haunts Technoblade, but he doesn't need to know for him to sympathise all the same.

He just extends his hand and offers to clean the sword.

He gets a cloth and sits down to start wiping down the dark metal blade. Techno lies down on the soft, leather couch, eyes firmly shut and breathing slow and heavy but not exactly right. There are bags under his eyes and a dullness to his gaze that speaks of sleepless nights.

He lets him pretend, because laying there not sleeping still counted as rest, and he knows a few tricks to get him to sleep at least a little.

Phil runs the cloth down the blade and lets it sing, and smiles when Techno's breathing becomes just a little deeper.

*

_Technoblade_

He's hanging on a precipice.

Feet planted on the nose of a sinking shipwreck, watching the world descend into chaos around him as he's slowly lowered down to join the rest of them. The spruce forest is eerily still, the snow too white. Undisturbed.

Technoblade anticipates the blood on the horizon as he stands in the peace between wars.

Phil is here.

He's glad for that. Phil is powerful, like him. Perhaps less so in battle prowess, but Phil was still the Angel of Death. He understands Technoblade, he understands that the power that sets you above other humans also sets you apart from them. Phil is like him. Neither immortal nor invulnerable, but undying in spite of it.

But Phil isn't like him, not really. There's no suppressed rage hiding behind his pale eyes, and he's not constantly looking for the next battle to win, the next country to destroy. No, Phil knows how to live in peacetime while Techno knew only survival. Phil knows how to build, to create, while Techno knew only of destruction.

Phil is happy to hold a hoe while Techno's fingers itch for the weight of a blade.

He was a warrior, and warriors don't die in peacetime.

(Where do the warriors go when the war is gone? When there is no more use for their deadly skills, when their killing instinct is no longer praised but condemned, when society is finished calling them heroes?)

Here, a land muffled by snow, far away from any judging gaze. A place he could watch the turtles in peace.

It goes. He wouldn't say it goes well, because he's still no good at this peace thing. But it goes.

It goes until there's a knock on his door that's not Phil.

No, it's _Dream._

Here he was, living his life, having sworn off his previous violent ways, and then Chaos himself shows up at his cottage.

"Hello, Technoblade," Dream says.

"Hello, Dream," He replies cautiously, "What are you doin' here?"

"I've just been wandering around," he says casually. "Saw the smoke and decided to check it out."

Techno doesn't believe that but he doesn't pry.

"You've found my humble abode."

Dream nods. "Yes. It's very… secluded. Far away from the action."

Techno snorts. "I don't know if you noticed, but I'm tryin' to live a peaceful life out here."

Dream studies him, his white, porcelain mask startlingly blank. "And how is that going?"

"Pretty well, actually."

If he disregards the constant internal conflict he's been going through, and just look from an outsider perspective, it does appear to be going well.

Phil's help had been invaluable.

"Yet you still wear full netherite armour in the safety of your own home," he notes, his gaze surprisingly piercing despite the barrier of the mask. "Expecting trouble?"

He looks down at the dark metal chest plate, leggings and boots he's wearing, each glowing with the iridescent hue of enchantments.

"Old habits die hard, I suppose."

The half-truth hangs in the air between them.

Dream shakes his head in disappointment. "You're capable of so much destruction. So much power at your fingertips. You alone could bring this world to ruin. And yet…"

"I didn't want chaos," he snaps. "I wanted freedom. The abolishment of oppression. They didn't want the same things, so I left."

The Chaos God considers him carefully. "They won't just leave you to live peacefully, you know."

Technoblade scoffs. "Oh, I know. They'll come after me eventually. You'll make sure of it, _puppet master_."

Dream nods, that eerie mask and crudely drawn smile cast into shadow. They had their differences, but they also had an understanding as the two strongest fighters in the land. A mutual pact of respect.

"Good to see you're prepared," he says, starting to walk away.

Whatever he's up to, Technoblade is more than prepared for.

He knows this peace won't last. The universe tends towards a natural state of disorder. Chaos is inevitable.

Twenty feet from his house, Dream pauses and glances back, as if knowing what he was thinking about.

This peace will descend into war.

The blood in his veins thrums excitedly and the voices in his head rise to a thundering din —

_Blood for the Blood God!_

*

_"They're coming for you. Be prepared."_

Phil's absence is explained by one message. Somehow, they'd got to him. His best friend, the only one he trusted with a compass to his home, and they had taken it from Phil.

He didn't need to be told. Change had been on his doorstep for a while now, slowly picking the lock and working its way in. He hasn't taken off his armour and his sword is at his belt. He has always been prepared.

Except, he thinks, he's running low on potions.

He grabs a bunch of glass bottles and gets to work, his hands working the brewing stands at lightning speeds, his motions easy and well-practiced.

His potions have just finished brewing when Ghostbur leads four men in full netherite armour to his doorstep.

He would be intimidated, if not for their costumes.

"I thought Halloween passed weeks ago. Who are you supposed to be?" he asks mockingly.

"We're the Butcher Army!" Fundy declares.

Technoblade raises an eyebrow. "Butcher Army?" he laughs. "You sent a butcher army for after the Blood God?"

They're wearing bloodstained aprons, Techno notes. How cute.

"Are those blood-splatters supposed to be much blood you've spilled? Is that supposed to look _intimidatin'?"_

Quackity scowls, unappreciative of Technoblade's derisive tone. "Well, we're bloodier than you are right now. I think that counts for something."

Techno looks at him as if he's thick. "Quackity," he says slowly, as if speaking to a toddler. "I didn't dye this cape."

All four of them look at him in confusion. Ranboo is the first one to get it, eyes widening as he unconsciously takes a step back.

"You mean…"

"It was dyed in blood. They don't call me the Blood God for nothin'."

Quackity looks taken aback for a moment before he finds his resolve again. He's changed, Techno thinks. He's so different from the boy who used to cower at the sight of him.

The old Quackity would be running away screaming. This Quackity is not only holding his ground, but opposing him.

How quickly the night changes.

They tell him to go with them, which he naturally refuses. They then order him to go, threatening the use of force.

Technoblade takes a final look at his cottage, still standing peacefully and turns to embrace the storm.

Potion bottles shatter at his feet as he cries his battle cry to the tune of breaking glass.

_"I choose blood!"_

He draws his sword in all it's flaming, netherite glory. It has spent weeks relegated to the training dummies, whining a flat, bored note as Techno hacked at the lifeless models with it. No longer— Orphan Obliterator sings softly as it parts human flesh and tastes blood once again. The soft flesh of Tubbo's arm is much sweeter than the hard material of the training dummies.

Part of him mourns the remnants of the peace he never got to fully enjoy. Too paranoid, perhaps, but was it paranoia if his fears were based in reason? They would come for him. They would choose war, time and time again, and the world would descend into chaos and blood.

Part of him wishes peace could've lasted longer, but the voices are also part of him, and they are much louder. They call for blood as they always do, and they call for him to fight, to hold his ground and defend himself against the bounty hunters. To protect what they had here.

He kills Tubbo easily — in self-defence, he claims, but how defensive was it if the threat wasn't very threatening in the first place?

Quackity has wisely stepped back; he was definitely the leader here, for all they claimed Tubbo was president. Ranboo is the new kid, and he seems a little lost so Techno decides to leave him for last.

That makes Fundy his next target.

Within seconds, he has brought him to his knees, half-dead and no longer a threat. Then Quackity steps forward, hiding behind his men no longer, Techno thinks, before he realises—

Quackity is sitting astride Carl.

Carl was one of the few things on this server he cared about. Second only to Phil, the horse had started off being something he could use to travel quickly and became a constant companion and friend he could trust to never judge him.

That horse was innocent.

He is brimming with rage at this farce of a government threatening an innocent animal to try to get at him, but it's working.

Quackity has his sword out and Carl is whinnying in distress so Technoblade drops his armour and his weapons and follows willingly.

Defeated—

For now.

*

The ride back from L'Manburg is too quiet, and the voices too loud.

His mind is whirling with everything that had happened, the snow rendering any sound muted and soft. He pushes out the angered cries of the voices, trying desperately to think.

Phil, under house arrest. What had he done to deserve that?

Kind Phil. The only one who truly understood him and had stayed by his side through the hell and back. Phil, who could find humour in the smallest things, who would fall into a fit of wheezes at Techno's deadpan one-liners.

Phil was the best of them all.

Techno vowed he would be back to free him.

He owed Dream a favour now, but he was fine with that. Unlike the rest of the server, Dream had never been his enemy. Not directly, at least.

If worse came to worst…

Well, with a bit of preparation, Techno was fully capable of defeating the entire server in combat.

No, Dream wasn't the issue here. What was an issue was that farce of a trial.

What a twisted place L'Manburg had become.

He didn't agree with Wilbur, but in the beginning, L'Manburg was meant to be a place of freedom and liberty and justice.

_"... A special place, where men could go and emancipate the brutality and the tyranny of their rulers."_

This place was real, but now it's not. For while there was power, there would be corruption, and there would never be peace and freedom.

They called it justice, to kidnap him and lock him up and execute him without trial.

They were the very same people who had once begged for his help and expertise in fighting their war. He had put in hours and hours of work, gathering resources so Pogtopia could even stand a chance in that war, and they had promptly thrown him aside once their interests didn't align anymore.

Used then betrayed and then hunted down and executed. But not dead, not yet. He would cheat death until the day he could cheat it no longer. But that was not today— not ever, if he had any say in it.

_Technoblade never dies._

Two Withers had been the price of using him as a weapon. He'd gone easy on them — once he saw they wouldn't give up on the government, he'd left them in peace. He could recognise where he wasn't wanted. If the world didn't want to be freed, he would find his own freedom.

(He should've known that peace never lasts. This server was ruled by Chaos and Blood and sometimes Death, no matter that the residents thought they could have independence.)

But for this — tracking him down, attempting to kill him, imprisoning his closest friend — two Withers would be far from enough.

He had not a closet but a vault of skeletons, and he would put them to good use.

He would make the first destruction of Manburg look like a firework party. There would be so much blood that L'Manburg Crater would become L'Manburg Lake. A lake of blood.

But he knew that wouldn't last.

He'd killed Quackity today. He could kill everyone a thousand times over and they would just respawn, angrier than before.

The people were just branches of the problem. The root of it all, the root of the corruption and the injustice and the oppression — the root was government.

And to destroy the government, he'd have to destroy L'Manburg.

It wasn't in his name, but he'd need to invoke a bit of chaos here.

*

There's a boy living underneath his house.

A boy he knew well. He had watched this boy grow from a child who idolised him to a hero standing on the opposite side of a chasm from him.

The boy was Tommy.

Tommy, who had sacrificed everything and everyone he cared about for the country that had exiled him. Tommy, who was still supposed to be in exile, where he could reflect on his actions and realise L'Manburg had wronged him as much as Dream had.

He, too, is chaos. Like Dream, but the opposite — Dream's chaos was measured and controlled. He was willing to do anything to make his puppets dance, but he was the one in control.

Tommy—

Tommy is a hurricane.

All gale-force winds and blistering raindrops and flashes of lightning arcing through the sky — Tommy caused havoc wherever he went and left destruction in his wake.

Dream's chaos was a black hole.

Tommy's was a wildfire.

"I'm going to get the discs back," he says, and Techno takes it to mean, "I'm no longer giving up my prized possessions for a country that wouldn't do the same for me."

He carefully fits a set of carefully crafted netherite armour onto Tommy, and hands him the Axe of Peace.

Technoblade spoke through actions, not words. This meant _I respect you_ , and _you are worthy_.

There's a boy living underneath his house, and perhaps, in another world, they could've been brothers.

They're not — not in this world, and not by blood, but they're something close to that.

_"Welcome home, Theseus."_

*

There had been a boy living underneath his house.

That boy stands opposing him once more, shoulder to shoulder with the weak, corrupt president who had tried to execute Technoblade. He wears the turtle helmet that Techno had carefully crafted and enchanted and grips Techno’s very best axe in his hand.

"I'm with Tubbo," Tommy says, and it's like a light has gone out.

Again. He had known this would happen and yet he'd hoped, like a human, that this time it would be different, and it had happened again.

He had trusted Tommy again, and he had been used again, and then betrayed again.

History repeats itself, again and again.

Tommy leaves him to be targeted by literally the rest of the server and Dream says, "Techno, got any Withers?" so casually Techno can hear the smirk on his face, even if he can't see it. He's grinning too, despite the spark of pain Tommy's actions had caused, because finally, after weeks of preparation, he has another chance to destroy L'manburg, and with the most powerful ally on his side this time.

And then Dream dips, leaving Techno behind to escape one versus thirty.

He sprints across the Nether like there's fire lapping at his heels. When he yanks open the door to his cottage, he sees Phil, having tea with Dream.

"Techno!" Chaos says cheerfully. "Come join us!"

Phil gets up to pour another cup of tea. "Where's Tommy?" he asks casually.

Techno scowls. "He betrayed me. He's with them now."

"What?"

"He said somethin' about 'Not bein' the person I wanna be,'" Techno says disbelievingly, making air quotes with his hands, "and he goes turncoat. I thought, out of everybody, he's lost the most to L'Manburg. To the government. His discs; his freedom. His best friend exiled him! He, of all people, should've understood why I want to raze that place to the ground. But no! He just goes crawlin' right back."

Phil shakes his head sympathetically. "Damn. You showed him everything."

"I trusted him! I showed him the vault, I gave him an entire set of netherite armour, I made him a cool turtle helmet— I even let him borrow my axe! And then he goes and pulls this!"

"He has your axe?" Phil cries.

"Yeah! He just used me for my items, leeched off my strength, used me as a weapon, and as soon as it was convenient, he just _leaves!_ "

"He'll never understand you," Dream says quietly. "He thinks you're a weapon because he can't comprehend a person having the kind of power you have. None of them can. To them, you're The Blade, the Blood God. They think you owe them something, as they do of any god. They don't see you as a person."

Techno slumps in an armchair. Phil hands him a cup of tea and he sips at it slowly.

"He has a point," Phil says. "Plus, Tommy has always been wilfully blind of the things he doesn't like. It doesn't matter what you say. If he doesn't want to listen, if he doesn't want to believe you, then he won't."

"And he wouldn't want to even consider the implication that L'Manburg could be anythin' but perfect," Techno finishes.

They're in the endgame now, and he sits with the two people most like him. One, he trusts absolutely, with anything and everything. They had conquered the world and lost it together. Their bond was forged in blood.

The other, he doesn't trust at all. Dream was only here because his interests aligned with Techno's and he'd be a valuable ally in destroying L'Manburg. Chaos and Blood may walk hand and hand at times, but they were not the friends.

Techno didn't know if he wanted another friend, not after what Tommy had done.

Later, when the sun has long since fallen and the moon awakens, Techno watches Phil tear down the cobblestone tower.

Dream is gone. After discussing their plan for the next day, and showing a few of his Wither skulls, he had left for… wherever he lived.

It takes him hours, but when Phil's done with it, the tower is nothing but an imprint in the snow.

"You have no idea how much I've been wanting to do that," he says. "That thing was such an eyesore."

"It was so ugly," Techno agrees.

"Agreed. Now, it's time to go to bed. Big day tomorrow! We're gonna destroy L'Manburg!"

Techno pauses.

"You don't have to follow me, Phil. It's a massive risk. I'll be goin' against Tommy and Tubbo and a lot of other people. You could leave now and live in peace. Be the neutral cryptid that visits his friends once in a while."

"And let you face them alone? Never. You need me here."

"I won't be alone. Dream will be helpin' me."

"I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I can throw him. No, I'm sticking with you Techno."

"And Tommy?"

Phil winces at the thought of the boy who had gone through so much. He wishes he could've done more to help him. Done better in raising him.

"Tommy is human. He has friends who will support him. He doesn't need me."

"He never understood what I was fightin' for," Techno wonders.

Phil shakes his head. "He wouldn't. He's not like us, and he'll never understand what it's like to be us. He's not capable of seeing things from our perspective."

They were both lonely figures, legends in their own right, standing too tall, casting shadows too long.

*

Dawn that day arrived in a blaze of red, a flaming sunrise seared across the sky.

Dream meets him just as the red has faded from the sky. Techno is preparing to become a one-man army. Brewing potions, making fireworks, forging a temporary, new axe. He misses his Axe of Peace.

_"Prepare quickly,"_ Dream says, _"Because we're leaving early!"_

They rush through the sewers to Techno's bunker under L'Manburg. Hundreds of hellhounds greet them, each with a pair of gleaming red eyes and a mouthful of massive, white teeth.

Dream steps back at the sight of the Hound Army. Techno supposes he must be doing something right if it was capable of intimidating the Chaos God.

Fearsome as they were, the hounds were fiercely loyal to their owner. Should anyone attack Technoblade, hundreds of hellhounds would pounce on them in retaliation. If someone wanted to kill him, they'd have to get through his dogs.

When they breached the surface, there was no crowd gathered to stop him.

Was this the great country of L'Manburg?

"Where is your army?" He shouts to the row of cosy houses on the hillside, each warmly lit with golden torchlight. _"Because mine is right here!"_

The first person who shows up is Tommy, who immediately backs away and begins screaming at Tubbo.

Slowly, L'Manburg gathers. They're a pitiful lot, weak and woefully under-prepared. Still, they outnumber him where it almost evens out. They watch him from a distance — the sight of his hounds sparks fear and confusion — _how were there so many?_ — before someone fires an arrow at him and the chaos begins.

The hounds leap forward and he follows in their wake, splashing a right cocktail of potions on them all.

It's one man versus a country. Gone were the days where he fought beside his brothers-in-arms — where he fought on behalf of someone else's beliefs. He's alone, Dream having climbed high above to prepare the TNT cannons and Phil squirrelled far away from the action to keep him and his single life safe. One blade against dozens; he has to make use of every advantage he has. For once, his opponents are not easy pickings for the Blood God. Individually, they are average fighters but together, they have him on the cusp of defeat. He's grateful Dream had the foresight to tell him to bring Ender pearls, because Sapnap for sure would've killed him there in that pit if he hadn't teleported away.

And that is how this story, and every story, shall end. They can come so very close, a hair's breadth from victory, but they would never take him down.

He is still Technoblade, the Blood God, unable to die, undefeated in combat.

Moonlight gleams off the wicked edge of his blade until each sweep of his sword looks like an arc of pure silver light. The voices call out in glee as his sword finds itself embedded in a human chest.

The hounds leap on the fallen man. Their canines puncture into the skin of the carcass, each one longer than his finger and dripping with blood. They rush forward at his command, great big claws tearing apart anything that stands in their way. It's bloody, it's gory and his voices roar their approval.

Swords clash against swords, axes thud against shields, and slowly, the hounds are taken down. When there are not enough left to surround and protect him, he lifts his crossbow up high and fires black and red fireworks into the sky.

_The signal._

On cue, the sky darkens, and the explosions begin. Two Withers rise into the air and begin to rain explosions down on the battlefield.

He makes his way towards a calm spot, leaping across a pockmarked field and multiple craters to get there. And then he places Wither skull upon Wither skull, until the sky is full of the great black skeletons and the wounded stop bleeding red and start bleeding black ichor.

L'Manburg becomes a minefield. Minutes later, TNT begins falling from a great obsidian grid structure that Dream had built above the country, and the voices cheer, _blood for thebloodgod skullsfortheSKULLTHRONE!_

Tommy's voice carries above the incessant sounds of TNT blasting the ground open.

"You didn't have to do this!" he cries. "We could've compromised--"

"Compromise?" Techno replies incredulously. "You gave me no choice! I was willing to live peacefully and just farm turtles, but the government hunted me down, they took my horse, and then they executed me! The government has to go!"

"You're being selfish!"

"Selfish? You've used me from the start! You've never thought of me as a friend. You saw me just as 'The Blade'. That's all I was to you — 'The Blade' — a weapon."

"You killed Tubbo! You killed so many people — you're just as bad as the government."

"Yeah? Remember when I was standin' there alone, against the whole government, and you and Wilbur just sat there on the sidelines and watched?" he spat, disgusted by Tommy's hypocrisy. "Did you step in? Were you guys the ones that stepped in and said, 'Don't worry Technoblade, we know you're in a high-pressure situation but we'll fight the world for you Technoblade' — no! You guys watched. You know what I did? Yesterday? When you were surrounded by like thirty people? I walked in. I was willin' to fight all of them for you, Tommy. I would've been there. That is the difference between us."

"We spent hours together!" Tommy cries.

" _Don't speak to me of loyalty!"_

"You were our friend!" Tommy protests, "and you know what? I thought friendship meant something to you."

"You never saw me as a friend!" he screams. "I listened to you for weeks, and what did you do? You went back to Tubbo, the guy that exiled you, that chose his country over you."

"Technoblade," Tommy says, "people are above the government—"

_"I'm a person!"_

"You are! And so are we! And that's why — the discs, the reason — they were stolen from me, nothing was taken from you—"

_"Discs aren't people!"_

With that, he knocks back a slow falling potion, raises his trident into the air and lets it pull him high into the sky.

"Air strike!" he calls, and the voices cheer in glee. He loads his crossbow with fireworks and fires from above. From this height, he can hear the quiet hiss of the TNT lighting as it's dispensed. He glides down slowly, before launching himself back up for another round. Weaving his way between Withers, he rains hell upon the few people who have survived — or are stupid enough to keep fighting after they respawn.

His rage at Tommy's actions fuel each shot of the crossbow. He hadn't even heard Technoblade's speech. He hadn't bothered to even process his argument, because Tommy's loyalty always hung on a knife's edge, a moment away from switching, and when Technoblade's usefulness to Tommy had expired, he no longer saw him as a friend, nor an ally, nor even a person.

He was an enemy, and the enemy was wrong.

And so history repeats itself. After Technoblade and Tommy join forces to take down a government, after Tommy goes and does the one thing that Techno is most against — joining the government — he stands in the bloodied fields of L'Manburg, just like last time, Orphan Obliterator in one hand and Rocket Launcher in the other, a massacre behind him and a crater in front, he summons Withers, and he destroys a country.

_Just like last time_.

With the sunrise comes the news that the L'Mantree had been burned down, and with that news comes L'Manburg's surrender. The sun casts a brilliant flare on the still smouldering crater that was L'Manburg. In the distance, TNT still falls, Dream having found some small corner yet to be reduced to rubble.

From structure to ruins, from existence to ashes and dust. From creation, destruction.

From order, the world returns to chaos.

*

It's peaceful after the battle.

It's a peace that won't last. This was the Dream SMP, and it wasn't named after the Chaos God for no reason. The only constant here was change.

Phil's still here.

He's grateful for that. A steady presence amongst the chaos — Technoblade and Philza and their penchant for achieving the impossible.

He's grateful that Phil listens to him. No one else seems to take note of his speeches, too caught up in their own protagonist storylines. Phil is the only one who will take in his every word and respond appropriately.

And he begins to wonder. There are voices in his head, but was that really a bad thing? Sure, they're a little bloodthirsty, and they get _really_ loud at times, but they're part of him.

They've always been part of him, and always will, so why should he keep fighting them?

He lets the voices free, and he listens.

He listens to their chatter. It starts off a mess and begins to give him a headache, but then, slowly, surely, he's able to discern their words.

He listens as they communicate excitedly. They emanate a distinct feeling of contentment as they're truly listened to, for once.

And after listening to them, he thinks deeply, and he responds.

**Author's Note:**

> According to Ao3 statistics, only about 10% of my readers actually leave a kudos, so if you enjoy this fic, consider leaving a kudos! It’s free, and you can’t change your mind, but it really inspires me to know you liked it!


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